From what I remember, the strips were printed in a TV listings magazine that came with the NOTW and were quite small as they were shared with several other strips and puzzles.
It turns out there is an actual species of cat designated fishing cat: There isn't much resemblance between fishing cats and Big (then again, resemblances are typically tenuous when it comes to Sonic). Moreover, I'm sure if Big was indeed a fishing cat -- and not just a fishing cat -- he'd be called Big the Fishing Cat and not Big the Cat. But it is interesting, if not merely coincidental.
Oh, that was actually (kind of) explained in an interview: I don't get what "cameo" was @Black Squirrel showing in that pic, though.
Fun fact: archive.org has the source of that interview: https://archive.org/details/Gamest125Gokujuparodiusspecialissue and a couple of other books: https://archive.org/details/jikkyooshaberiparodiusofficialguide https://archive.org/details/sexyparodiusofficialguide (all ripe for Retro CDN)
Hiya... So without turning this into an introduction post. I actually have all the original scans... Because I was one of the people who originally scanned them. Don't bother trying to contact the person at that tumblr it's not worth the headache you'll get. But I actually have the original scans on my computer and more than willing to share if anyone has a good idea as to where they can be stored? Furthermore? The scans I have are not the shrunk down sizes that got uploaded, mine are the full page scans that I took which includes the other comic strips that they published, including the lost Captain Scarlet and Flintstones comic strips which I keep meaning to share with those fandoms. So if anyone has a good way that I can bundle these together and upload them fairy easily (bare in mind each page is around 6-7MB in size), please advise and I'll get on it asap. A few pre-emptive Q&A's. 1: Do you have all the scans that were uploaded to the Tumblr? Yes and no... The original physical pages came from Richard Elson who kept a copy of all his work, I helped scan them and have scans of each page that he had. However, he had around 2 strips that where missing and when he left the comic he stopped archiving the pages from another artist. However, another person had uploaded those pages a few years prior to my efforts to scan the Elson ones. So they filled in the gaps but are noticeably poorer in quality. Those pages were the ones taken to complete the last chunk of strips from the other artist. 2: What about the other 2 missing Richard Elson strips? One has been found! A few days ago in fact, someone actually found one of the missing strips... but there's a catch, it's a black and white photocopy of it. So not brilliant, but it's there. 3: How complete is it? Including the non Richard Elson strips that the other guy uploaded? Somewhere around 97-99%? There might be one missing Elson strip, unsure on the other artist. 4: Don't I know you? Yeah I'm that Badnik Mechanic guy from YouTube who used to write for TSS. A few things so you know I'm not pulling your legs. And here's one of the pages at the original quality. https://i.imgur.com/CIBNwNn.jpg (6-7MB)
Satoshi Okano has been sharing a lot about his time at Sega and the artwork that he did. Cool how he reused this pose and no one really noticed.
I always like the first batch of modern sonic art, but never really anything made after. I guess we have Okano to thank specifically, though confirmation on his role in other games would be good.
It's a bit of a cliche saying around here, but: Put them on the Wiki =P https://info.sonicretro.org/Special:Upload , and if you use a file naming scheme that's going to be unique (the name of the strip inc. newspaper name plus the number ought to do it) that'll be helpful.
@MrMechanic Any chance you could provide uncropped versions of your scans? The Tumbler crops them to only focus on the Sonic strips, which is fair enough. But those pages have lots of other popular brands which had exclusive comics which were only printed in the News of the World. As you've already gone to the trouble of scanning the full pages, it would be neat if they could be made available. I am not sure how that would affect things on the Wiki which is Sonic focused, but if the full uncropped pages aren't allowed, maybe you could upload them to something like MEGA.
I too would love to see the full page scans. It would be preserving a bit of history, seeing them in their original context. In addition to the Sonic Retro Wiki, MEGA, and so on, Archive.org might be another good option. Neat! Where can it be seen?
Meant to post a bit earlier, sorry for the delay. @Overlord I'd be more than willing to upload them to retro, in fact I think it would be a very good idea if you don't mind over 400MB of info being added, however it's asking me to log in, is this separate from forum log in access? As for a unique filing name... erm... Maybe, that's going to take a while for me to get done. In fact... I'll just bung a zip file link at the end of this post, if anyone has the time to do that feel free. Also I actually have Richard Elson on my contacts list so might give him a buzz since I know he has a few other bits of anecdotal info. If you wanted to give this it's own wiki page I should be able to find some additional information. @big smile If it isn't an issue, I'd much rather upload the full pages because cropping them is going to take too long and I don't have that time, so if it's not an issue I'd rather upload the full pages. @Pengi Well I do have some good news about that! I actually got it wrong when I said there was only 1 missing page... They found the 2nd missing Richard Elson pages! Unfortunately they're in black and white because they're photocopies which were taken for a libraries newspaper archive. We're actually quite lucky with this because lots of libraries only scan the main newspaper and not the supplements. So whilst it's annoying it's in low res black and white... It really is better than nothing at all! https://i.imgur.com/mGzQpDd.jpg https://i.imgur.com/yrf9k8K.jpg Anyway, if anyone wants to rename them all to something appropriate/unique, this is the file link. The file names are in order, so scan 1 is the first page, scan 2 the following weeks/part 2 etc. But you'll probably want to cross reference with the tumblr to compensate for the missing pages. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Iywn6y0zOLpn0EulPZ6nLTAyg1g8NEs5/view?usp=sharing Any issues with the file or if Google Drive nukes the quality, let me know and we can look into some other means to upload them * The file doesn't include the black and white pages linked above or the non Elson pages, you'll have to get those from the tumblr unfortunately =/
Apologies for the double post, if not allowed feel free to merge. I've spoken with Luke Fletcher of Sonic the Comic Online who provided me with the following. https://mega.nz/?fbclid=IwAR1D2Br9D...a!N4DxsXhrSPDyHUk9lfu9fFvZRLAWBBRpruNqPW3byWs (Person who put this file together was someone named adventuremaster18) That's a link to a .rar which contains all the tumblr strips and the missing black and white pages. The files are ordered numerically. The collection also includes the strips which were not done by Richard Elson, however these are in much lower scan quality than the ones I took, but not much we can do about that unless someone has the original physical pages. So if anyone does want to try and take this as a mini project to correctly name/order and then upload to the wiki, I think you have everything you need to do so between my upload and this one.
Wow! Thanks for sharing all of that! There's something I've been curious about for years - Richard Elson's version of Robotnik in the early editions of these strips (as well as early STC and the Sonic the Hedgehog Yearbook) had a unique design, with elements from both Sega of America's Robotnik and DiC animation's Robotnik (the yellow stripes, ginger mustache). The cover of the Yearbook even incorporates the gloves and shoulder pads of the Saturday cartoon. A similar "inbetween" design was used in Sonic Spinball's concept art. Sonic Spinball's ending also had the upside-down "T" design to the belt/shirt seen in Elson's version, as opposed to the "+" design of the final cartoons. This all probably stems from Robotnik's cartoon design going through a lot of revisions. So I'm curious - what reference material was Richard Elson given for Dr. Robotnik, in these early days? Was the version he drew the design he was given? Or did he merge two conflicting designs together?
@MrMechanic So the missing ones are 1994-05-29 and 1994-11-13 as listed from our page here (Sonic the Hedgehog (News of the World comic)), correct?
Don't know the answer off hand to that one. But to add to the confusion(?) Elson did the cover for the yearbook and still has his initial prototype page. Following is my pic of a comparison shot between the prototype and final. Robotnik is showing a few differences between the proto and final.